“So are you looking for an alpha?” Bathsheba asked in a friendly voice. “Since you’re not interested in dating outside of the wolf-packs?”
“Yes. Do you have one?”
That coiling in my stomach wasn’t hope, was it?
Bathsheba pursed her lips and then turned the monitor screen back to her. “Well, I don’t know for sure. I can call all of the profiles and ask them their designation, and then get my webmaster to update their profiles. It might take a few hours but if you like, I can get it finished by the end of the business day. Like I said, we don’t have that many wolves in our system. Probably about a dozen.”
“That would be wonderful,” I said, getting out my debit card. “How much extra will it cost?”
She shook her head at me and gave me a faint smile. “No charge. But I do have a request.”
Oh, here we go…my hackles rose slightly.
“If you do find an alpha, I’d like to ask both of you to talk with my husband about your pack possibly joining the Alliance. We’re looking to strengthen our ties with the local wolves and can’t seem to get a toehold in the door. Nothing much, I promise. Just dinner and discussion. No pressure.”
Ugh. That had all the appeal of a timeshare sales pitch, but I desperately wanted the list of alphas she could get me. “You got it.”
Chapter Two
An hour later, my own profile was posted with a bad photo of me that looked more like a mug shot than a plea for a date, and I drove my F150 back to Little Paradise, Texas.
By the time I’d pulled the truck into the driveway of the Savage house, my phone had rang three times. I let them all go to voicemail, every single ring filling me with dread. If one of the pack needed me, they’d text. Trina had them all addicted to texting.
Only strangers called anymore. Strangers, and bill collectors.
The lights were off as I drove in, but again, no surprises. Since Cash’s death, the kids in the pack had seen my pain. Seen me struggle. Watched the house fall down around my ears. They’d found ways to be scarce, to give me time to grieve. Even Holly spent most evenings god-knows-where with baby Eddie, just so I could have alone time. They were all on skittish footing around me. As a result, my normally warm, enormous house lay cold and empty.
Some alpha I was. Couldn’t even take care of myself, much less my pack. Disgusted with myself, I hopped out of the car and onto the gravel driveway.
The scent of the evening air carried with it the faint hint of rain, a stray cat or two, and the sour smell of the garbage cans around the back of the house. I mentally berated myself for not putting out the cans – I’d never done it before. Cash had taken care of it, and I’d forgotten which days were garbage pickup and which weren’t. Now I’d have to smell two-week old milk. Ugh. My wolf-nose could smell it from all the way across the yard.
With my car under the carport, I hurried to the front door, stomped up the wooden steps and the wrap-around porch of my father’s three-story house, and locked the door firmly behind me. There was no scent of anyone recently nearby, but it was hard to tell, since my property always smelled like wolves.
The interior of the house was equally depressing. Wilted bouquets of flowers covered every surface, filling the air with the thick musk of old, dried roses. I hadn’t bothered to get rid of them yet, and at least they masked the scent of the garbage outside. The walls were bare now, and it always startled me to see that and the faded spots on the wallpaper. I’d taken down all the pictures of Cash after he’d died, just like when Mom had taken down all the pictures of Dad when he’d passed on, and then I’d done the same when Mom had died a few months later.
Werewolves weren’t much for changing routines.
The house was a disaster – laundry piled up on every surface, some mine, some belonging to the pack kids. Some was Cash’s, but I couldn’t bring myself to touch it. Ditto the dirty dishes and stacks of pizza boxes – they crept over every inch of free space in the living room. I ignored all of it.
Inside the house, under the stink of rotting flowers, there was a bitter, musky scent in the air that I couldn’t place. I noticed it as I put down my keys and headed to my bedroom. It was very slight and I ignored it as I entered my study, flipping on the computer and sitting at my desk. Probably something else rotting. I wasn’t exactly going to win any housekeeper of the year awards at the moment.
And though I didn’t want to, I pulled my cellphone out of my pocket and glanced at the screen.
One message out of all three calls.
The hairs on the back of my neck prickled at that, and I suppressed the low growl that rose in the back of my throat.
I clicked the ‘Missed Calls’ icon. One number was Len, calling from jail. Probably wanting to know when I’d bail his ass out, and I wasn’t in a rush over that one – not while I didn’t have a male alpha securely at the head of the pack. Len had his eye on Cash’s old position, and I wasn’t eager to jump into bed with Len. Just the thought made my stomach churn. The next call was from one of the kids – surprise, surprise – Holly’s number. The most sensitive of my small pack, she’d been feeling out the waters on a regular basis, and I guessed that she was reporting back to the others if I’d gotten over my sorrow yet.
Not yet. I didn’t know if the ache in my chest would ever go away. My brother – and co-leader of our small pack – was dead. Car accident. Such a mundane thing to happen to a werewolf, but it killed him just as dead as any human. It left a sick feeling in my stomach every time I thought about it. I pushed it at the back of my mind, resolving to call Holly back shortly. The others wanted to know what was going on with their pack, and with the upcoming full moon.
By the time the full moon hit in a few days, I either needed to concede the pack to Roscoe and get the hell out of dodge, or find a new alpha before I ended up as Roscoe’s bitch. Literally. He’d usurp my pack in a heartbeat, leaving us helpless and bent to his will. He’d already made his intentions known, and just thinking of him taking over curdled the contents of my stomach.
The female alpha always mated with the male alpha.
There were a few exceptions, of course. Like siblings that were alphas. Myself and Cash had fallen into that category. Our father had been the alpha of the Savage Pack, our mother the female alpha. When they’d died, we’d moved into their places without a ripple stirring amongst our small pack. The Savage pack had always been an eclectic mix, but with turnover and deaths and some wandering away for a new pack, we suddenly found ourselves an incredibly young pack overnight. Len was two years younger than me. Holly, Spence and Trina were all young. Joanne was barely twenty before she’d up and left the territory behind because she couldn’t finagle the position of female alpha away from me. She’d left baby Eddie in Cash’s care as a replacement for her spot in the pack. That left Carlos, our omega. He was the only elderly person we had, and he’d been fifty before his death in the same car accident that had taken Cash. They’d been coming back from one of the Oklahoma casinos, both drunk as skunks, and ran off the road.
It had left me with a pack of children and grieving my brother’s death.
It had also left me vulnerable. As an alpha female with no male, I was at the mercy of the strongest male werewolf that came into our territory. As an alpha female, I could resist, but only for so long, before I succumbed to the stronger will of the alpha male.
And Roscoe had made it clear that he intended for my alpha to be him. I had a guess as to who had left me the message on my phone, too. With the sour taste of dread in my mouth, I clicked ‘Voicemail’ and listened.